Ultimate Warrior
by Trace Reading
Summary: A little glimpse at what Samus' life could be like after the B.S.L. incident.  Really short, sorry.


_Research station R101, codename "Hydra"_

Explosions ripped through the satellite, centered on the seldom-visited Sector Zero. At first the research staff feared an assault by the Pirate leader named Ridley, an oft-resurrected space dragon from the Pyrrhus Nebula; external and internal scans, however, did not indicate his presence, but rather the use of beam weaponry commonly employed by Federation assets. The energy signature of the discharges matched one person in particular: two time planet killer Samus Aran. At present the security forces didn't know what she wanted with the restricted zone, or why she was in the process of blowing it up with everything in her arsenal. Their concerns encompassed two thoughts: _Do we engage_ and _is she going to kill us if we fight her._ Given how the average security officer was equipped with a flash pistol and only basic armor, the best course of action was also the easiest—stay the hell out of her way and hope she doesn't decide to blow up the entire station.

Several tense hours passed, punctuated with random alarms and vicious tremors that set the entire satellite to shaking, and then it all…stopped. A distress signal had gone out soon after it was confirmed that the intruder was indeed Samus, clad as ever in the device that her fellow Hunters commonly referred to as the Fusion Suit. Help, however, was still another three hours away when the alarms finally stopped ringing, when the destruction finally ended.

Then the lights went out. Every computer terminal on the station flared red with alerts, emergency lights snapped on, and just like that, decades of experimentation vanished. The more critical work was backed up elsewhere, files transmitted to auxiliary locations as soon as the virus started destroying information, and it was this that Samus was counting on.

Nobody saw the hunter leap out of an airlock and drift through the void, and thus nobody saw the gunship swoop in and pick her up as though an eagle snatching a fish from a river. Three hours after Samus left the scene, a patrol group arrived at Hydra Station, and the Federation's best and brightest stormed onto the decks, cryo-blasters ready to subdue the renegade. As soon as the last pair of boots hit the floor, the screens came to life again, a male voice booming through the comms.

"Hydra station has been found guilty of harboring a Metroid engineering program. The punishment for this infraction is immediate vaporization. Have a nice day."

Twenty seconds after that, Hydra station's reactor detonated with enough force to do just that.

Inside the gunship, a helmet is unsealed, platinum blonde hair spilling out over armored shoulders, to whisper against iridescent and almost _fleshlike_ laminate—she feels every strand as if it were on her own skin, which is why she can react so quickly to oncoming danger—and eyes that were once blue but now a strange green fix on the two men sitting in the cockpit alongside a holographic projection of an octahedron separated into two halves joined by the points of a cube.

"Mission complete." Samus' voice is melodious, charmingly sleek and ultimately deceptive. She sheds not a single tear for the lives she has erased. She is the last creation of the Chozo, the ultimate weapon. Samus Aran is the only creature in the galaxy deserving of the name 'Metroid'. She sheds no tears, has no nightmares, and all the same her heart is heavy. Once there was a time when she didn't kill so indiscriminately, a time when she smiled at jokes, even a time when she laughed. There was a time that Samus was _happy._

Those days are gone. Anthony in one chair, Armstrong in the other, and Adam's avatar in the middle, all look to her expectantly. There are still cloning facilities to unearth and destroy. Until the last of them is eradicated, Samus cannot rest. Only when the threat of the parasites is ended once and for all and the universe forgets about them will she be able to make atonement. Anthony will probably be court-martialed for his involvement. Armstrong will lose his Hunter license at best, and Adam, well, they'll send worms into his brain to erase all the aspects of his personality that made him a good leader and leave a cold machine in his place.

And when they are all gone, Samus will follow, and the metroid threat will be truly eliminated. She knew what the outcome would be the moment she donned the armor, the moment she felt the living circuits of the arm cannon superimposing themselves on her senses. Samus knew this, and she still took the burden willingly. Some part of her wishes she could have had a normal life, but that part is small, broken, and doesn't say much anymore.

Some part of her thinks she should leave a legacy. That part is a fool. If even one cell remained, anything that the Federation could harvest and duplicate, the horror would continue. Adam chimed from the console.

"I have the next location. Set course for the Corona relay." As the ship streaks into warp, Samus allows herself a moment's rest, her allies sharing in the burden with her. Just this once.


End file.
